Mark Plotkin and Chief Tashka were pleased to share the stage at TEDGlobal 2014. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

A few years ago, ethno-botanist Mark Plotkin injured his foot. A visit to a doctor at home had him feeling pain-free for a few months, but things changed when he headed to the Amazon rainforest for work. There, a local shaman noticed his limp and offered him a palm tree wrap along with a specially-brewed tea. Plotkin has now been pain-free for years, he says in hisTED talk, “What the people of the Amazon know that you don’t.”

This experience is just one that has led him to see the indigenous tribes of the Amazon—and the medicinal plants that their shamans cultivate—as an irreplaceable repository of wisdom. With his non-profit, the Amazon Conservation Team, Plotkin works hand-in-hand with indigenous tribes in the Amazon to help them put in place their own conservation strategies, and to make sure that they are compensated for ingredients they share with the world. Because, as Plotkin says, the people of the Amazon have a deep understanding of the “treasure trove” of potential cures in the their midst.

Last month at TEDGlobal, our audience got the rare opportunity to hear directly from an Amazonian indigenous chief, who happens to be a longtime friend and colleague of Plotkin’s. Tashka Yawanawá became chief of the Yawanawá people at age 35, and, on the stage, he told the recent story of Brazil’s indigenous rights movement, which gained momentum in the ’70s and ’80s. But lately, he says, government support for indigenous autonomy has waned, as the lands that the communities occupy come under threat from logging, mining and other types of exploitation. Chief Tashka expressed concern about the exploitation of local medicinal plants, key to Yawanawá beliefs, and explained how they are working to distribute their resources to outsiders through a partnership with Aveda, among other channels, that allows them to generate income for the community.

This month, Tashka Yawanawá is helping his tribe cope with terrible flooding in his region, far worse than they’ve ever seen. Many homes were destroyed, along with well pumps, water filters, generators, boats and more. We will present Yawanawá’s talk when he is back online and able to engage in the conversation.

In the meantime, Plotkin’s talk gives a powerful introduction to an essentially identical idea. Both of these speakers stressed the importance of indigenous ethnomedical wisdom, and the need to protect it and transmit it to younger generations. Both highlighted protecting nature as an absolute essential.

With Tashka Yawanawá offline, we asked Plotkin to talk to us a little bit about his friend.

“It’s a very strange story,” says Plotkin describing how they met. “I was speaking at a gathering in New Mexico, of all places, and there was this guy there [who I thought was] Native American. We were talking, and he had a little bit of an accent. So I said, ‘Are you Mexican?’ he said, ‘No, my wife is. I’m Brazilian.’ So we switched into Portuguese. We spent a couple of days together.”

Plotkin finds himself routinely blown away by Tashka Yawanawá.

“He’s such a fascinating character,” says Plotkin. “He’s a Brazilian Indian who wanted to be a Mexican and then wanted to be a cowboy. He has this unusual sort of tri-cultural background and now he’s gone back to be the chief of his community and protect their culture in the forest. I think he’s fascinating.”

While they don’t work together often—Plotkin says that Chief Tashka does a great job representing for his people—they do work in the same areas. “We watch and admire,” says Plotkin. “A lot of what the Yawanawá are doing is what [the Amazon Conservation Team] is doing too. We showed up in the Amazon 12 years ago and said, ‘We’re not going to map your lands, you’re going to map your lands. We’re going to give you the equipment and teach you how to do it, but we would like you to do it.’ That was revolutionary when we started and — having Tashka do it — that supported our work … We were also the first organization to encourage elderly indigenous people to pass their knowledge on to their kids and their grandkids. Having groups like Tashka’s take that on themselves is a measure of success. Because it shouldn’t be about us doing it — it should be about the people that it means the most to doing it themselves.”

While Plotkin works more often with the Trio people, another Amazonian community, he is continually intrigued by the Yawanawá. “They are people who have been in touch with the outside world for a while,” he says, “but they have managed to hang on to their culture and their forest, which is no easy thing to do in this world that we live in, where everybody everywhere wants resources.”

And this gets to one of the key tensions in Plotkin’s work—that introducing indigenous communities to the outside world can be a tricky thing. “Technology can help and technology can hurt,” says Plotkin. “If you go into a village and start handing out GPSs and iPads and radios, you’re may be giving them the impression that we know magic and that everything we know is better, which is totally false. It’s better to do it in a culturally sensitive way. To say, ‘Look, we have antibiotics and they’re great — they might be able to cure infections your shamans can’t — but you guys have medicines we don’t have. You can cure some things that we sometimes can’t.’”

As for Tashka Yawanawá, Plotkin does hope that the outside world will get to better know his friend through his upcoming TED Talk. “I’m hoping somebody will make a movie about his life,” says Plotkin.

Patricia Medici, a TED Fellow, works with tapirs — the largest land mammal in South America. Photo: Marina Klink

If you want to call someone a “jackass” in Brazil, you call them a “tapir.” These large, forest-dwelling mammals look a bit like a cross between a wild boar and an anteater. And while they’re often derided, they are truly amazing animals.

Brazilian conservation biologist Patricia Medici is utterly devoted to tapirs. When this TED Fellow first started working with tapirs in 1996, nearly nothing was known about the elusive herbivores. Now, thanks in part to her research, we know that tapirs are central to the health of forest ecosystems — and that they are under threat.

This week, the Sixth International Tapir Symposium — the world’s only conference dedicated to tapirs — convenes in Campo Grande, Brazil, bringing together 100 conservationists, researchers, NGOs and governmental agencies from around the world to strategize about tapir conservation and survival. The symposium is the official conference of the IUCN’s Tapir Specialist Group, which Medici has chaired since 2000.

As the conference kicks off, we asked her to share some fascinating facts about her favorite animal. Here’s what she had to say, in her own words.

1. Tapirs are considered living fossils. They’ve been around since the Eocene, having survived several waves of extinction. There are four surviving tapir species: mountain tapirs from the Andean Mountains; Central American tapirs; Asian tapirs in Southeast Asia; and South American tapirs — the ones I studies most closely.

2.Tapirs are pregnant for more than a year. It’s actually pretty amazing that tapirs are still around at all, as they reproduce very slowly. They have a gestation period of 13-14 months and only one offspring is born at a time. If a population’s numbers decline — due to deforestation, disease, hunting or roadkill — it’s very unlikely it will ever recover. In fact, things can reach a point where there are no populations to speak of — only individuals lost in the landscape. Tapirs can be persistent and adaptable in isolation, which is why they’ve managed to survive for so long. But despite their resilience, their genetics get compromised.

You don’t want to come between a tapir baby and its mother — the normally docile animals become fierce when offspring are threatened. Photo: Daniel Zupanc

3. Tapirs are South America’s largest land mammals. They can weigh up to 300 kilos, which is about half the size of a horse. This heft makes it possible for the animals to push trees over to get to fruits. While they’re generally gentle, docile animals, they can attack when feeling threatened — especially females with babies. Tapirs are also nocturnal, hiding in thick patches of forest to sleep most of the day, and waking at around 3:30 in the afternoon to forage. This combination of weight and night hours means that they are very difficult animals to study in the field — you can’t just follow a tapir and collect data. You have to capture, anesthetize and radio-collar them, set camera traps, and radio-track them during the night when they are active. This may be why it took so long for people to start studying tapirs seriously.

4. Tapirs are called “gardeners of the forest.” Tapirs are wide-ranging animals, moving great distances between various kinds of habitats as they travel from forest patch to forest patch, providing a functional link between them. They eat fruit in one place, swallow the seeds, walk long distances, and defecate on the way — dispersing seeds and creating a plant genetic flow between habitats. Many other animals play this role, but because tapirs eat enormous amounts of fruit, they distribute an enormous quantity of seeds. Forest structure and diversity would be very different without the presence of tapirs!

5. Tapirs are considered an umbrella species. Tapirs require a lot of space in order to find all the resources they need, and they share habitat with many other animals — peccaries, deer, birds, insects, and so on. This means that if you protect tapir habitat, you end up protecting habitat for many other species.

The tapir’s prehensile snout is very good for rummaging for leaves and fruit. Photo: Luciano Candisani

6. The tapir’s nose is flexible. While this prehensile snout is not as flexible as, say, an elephant’s trunk, it’s very good for snuffling around and grabbing leaves and fruit.

7. Even though South American tapirs are threatened with extinction, it can be hard to convince people that this is the case. South American tapirs are distributed throughout South America in 11 countries and a multitude of different eco-regions. In Brazil, this tapir species lives in four different biomes: Atlantic Forest, Pantanal, Amazon, and Cerrado. Their wide distribution makes people think that tapirs are plentiful, but in reality, the biomes are not connected. There’s only 7% of the Atlantic Forest left, and the Cerrado is going pretty much the same direction. The edges of the Amazon are being cleared as we speak. So really, we have only small, isolated populations of tapirs in South America. Still, every year conservationists must make the case and carefully justify why to keep the South American tapir on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

8. Tapirs are hunted for their meat, which is demolishing populations within the Amazon. Recent studies of indigenous hunting practices in the Amazon revealed that the areas immediately surrounding indigenous communities are devoid of mammals. There are huge gaps with no tapirs, peccaries, agouti, anything — in a place where deforestation hasn’t even started yet. Tapirs are sadly misjudged as stupid and not worthy of saving. While many people think of them like a donkey, I prefer to compare tapirs with jaguars – they’re powerful and majestic. Some people mix up tapirs with anteaters or other animals — they don’t have any idea what they are. That’s something I’m working hard to change as I think greater recognition will help conservation efforts.

Baby tapirs’ stripes and spots make them resemble a watermelon. Sadly, they lose these markings as they mature. Photo: LIana John

9. Baby tapirs are possibly the cutest animal offspring in the animal kingdom! They are born dark and covered with yellow or white stripes and spots, and look very much like a watermelon. These stripes and spots begin to fade at three months and are completely gone after 5 to 6 months, although some vestiges of spotting may remain in young adults. This serves as camouflage against predation in the wild. Tapir calves stay with their mother for 12 to 18 months.

10. Speaking of baby tapirs, there’s one in the Brazilian Pantanal named TED! I’ve been working in the Pantanal since 2008, and have since captured and monitored 45 individual tapirs. One of my monitored females — Justine, first captured in May 2013 — had a baby sometime between April and May 2014, and we recently got a camera-trap photo of the little male watermelon. I named this little baby tapir TED!

A photo of the new addition to Medici’s tapir family: baby TED. Photo: Patricia Medici

]]>http://blog.ted.com/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-tapirs/feed/3Tapir-featuremmechinitaPatricia Medici, a TED Fellow, works with tapirs -- the largest land mammal in South America. Photo: Marina KlinkYou don't want to come between a tapir baby and its mother -- the normally docile animals become fierce when offspring are threatened. Photo: Daniel Zupancunnamed-1Baby tapirs' stripes and spots make them resemble a watermelon. Sadly, they lose these markings as they mature. Photo: LIana JohnA camera-trap shot of a new addition to Medici's tapir family: baby TED. Photo: Patricia MediciTEDGlobal: The Foresthttp://blog.ted.com/tedglobal-the-forest/
http://blog.ted.com/tedglobal-the-forest/#commentsThu, 09 Oct 2014 22:56:59 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=92817[…]]]>We built a theater for TEDGlobal 2014 and, after the event closes, it will be taken down. And as Chris Anderson admitted at the end of session 9, this has many of us concerned about the environmental impact of this conference.

A chance encounter with Tasso Azevedo, the speaker who shared how deforestation in Brazil rolled back 75% in 10 years, surfaced an idea for something to do about this. Azevedo shared the name of a locally based organization, SOS Mat Atlântica, that works on reforestation and could help us offset the carbon footprint of the conference by planting trees. They use about 1,300 trees of 80 different species per hectare, and they follow up on the development of the trees for at least five years to guarantee that they are growing well. Each tree costs $20, and they conduct an independent audit to guarantee that planting is really done properly.

And so in a historic town near São Paulo, TED is planting a forest of 10,000 trees. “We’ve written a check on your behalf,” Anderson told the audience. “That’s 10 trees for each of you.”

As TEDGlobal 2014 speakers stepped on the stage in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, people five hours away in São Paulo got a chance to share their ideas too. Delta sent a mobile recording studio, called the Innovation Gate, out into the city to gather video submissions of the best and brightest ideas. By making stops at universities, co-working spaces and business centers, Delta hoped to surface truly unique ideas. And they succeeded. Check out the video above for three of them, from a market where you pick-your-own produce to an initiative to call people to get them interested in social action.

This contest wasn’t just open to residents of São Paulo. Anyone in Brazil with a great idea was encouraged to submit a video through the website, InnovationGate.com.br. The videos were watched by a panel of judges from TED and Delta, along with Rodrigo Baggio of the Center for Digital Inclusion, who spoke at TEDGlobal about the power of technological innovation. The submissions were judged on their innovativeness, their feasibility, and their potential impact on the community. The winners: Marcelo Cardenuto, Henrique Castan and Valter Pieracciani.

Delta’s Innovation Gate is traveling around São Paulo, capturing great ideas from students and entrepreneurs. Photo: Courtesy of Delta

Fabio Mendes, Regional Marketing Officer for Delta, explained the thinking behind the activation. “The idea was to connect ideas outside the TED conference to it. Ideas that can change the world may take off through TEDsters, TED.com and the TED community,” he says. “One of the motivations was also to bring TED’s spirit to the largest city in South America — its creativity epicenter.”

Mendes hoped this contest would find unique ideas that wouldn’t necessarily surface in other locations. “I think we’ll see some ideas around solving daily problems like mobility — for motorcycles and other vehicles in São Paulo streets,” he said as the initiative kicked off. “We’ve got one interesting video that proposes that every citizen in São Paulo have a 3D map of the city for better planning construction and renovations, due to the lack of urban planning.”

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In this time-lapse of Rio de Janeiro, shown during session 1 of TEDGlobal 2014, waves lap the shore of Copacabana Beach with a beautiful rhythm, and clothes on a line flap in the breeze in a favela. Meanwhile, steam dances off a waterfall, and ships pirouette through the city’s harbor. Below, we asked its creator, Joe Capra of Scientifantastic, a few questions.

How did you get interested in time-lapse?

I’d done regular photography for a long time. One day, I was looking around online and saw a time-lapse video by Tom Lowe, who was one of the first to do nighttime Milky Way time-lapses. It just blew me away. I thought, “That’s amazing. I want to go do that.” So I did some research. He had a forum that people would go to and share information on how to do time-lapses, because it was still very new then. I decided to use all my vacation days from my day job, and go to Iceland to shoot time-lapses. Once I put that video out, I started getting jobs to go different places and shoot time-lapses.

What are some of the most interesting places that you’ve time-lapsed?

Iceland, definitely. Greenland was also amazing — I took a dogsled trip out over a group of frozen lakes, a place where nobody really ever goes. I got to see some very remote places — like the Ilulissat Icefjord, where the glacier falls into the sea. I had just seen the documentary Chasing Ice, where James Balog time-lapsed glaciers for years so you could see how the glaciers are receding — and it was really cool to see it myself. I kept thinking, “Where I’m standing may be 20 miles from where a person 10 years down the road will be standing.”

What brought you to Rio?

Panasonic saw my Iceland video, and wanted me to shoot some time-lapse for their new 4K ultra-HD television sets. They asked me where I wanted to go, and Rio was high on the list. It’s a place I’d always wanted to see.

How did you go about selecting what places you wanted to capture?

I’m pretty crazy when it comes to planning and scheduling. I sit at the computer — I search Google Images, I search forums, and I look for all kinds of interesting places that might lend themselves to good time-lapse shots in addition to the famous stuff. I got a guide, and we went all over, to all the places on my list. Panasonic had wanted us to go to Iguazu Falls. It was beautiful, though not technically in Rio — which a few people commented on in the video. One thing I thought was really cool — we’d hired a production person and she actually got us on top of a rooftop inside one of the favelas. Not a lot of people get that type of access, so that was a wonderful experience.

That shot is great. The motion in it is so subtle.

There’s a lot going on, a lot of detail. When I was editing it, I was showing some friends. I had those shots in there fairly quickly, but everybody said, “Keep them up a little longer. You’ve got to give people some time to look around and notice people and little animals walking around.”

What is the process of setting up a time-lapse? How long are you at these locations?

The process can be really complicated or it can be very simple. When I show up at a location, I’ve already gone on Google Earth and panned around to figure out where the sun’s going to set and rise, and get a general feeling about the type of shot I want. But when you’re actually standing there, things aren’t always as you planned — maybe there’s a big bush where you would have wanted to set up the camera.

Once I figure out the shot, then I figure out the gear to use. Sometimes it’s just a matter of tripod and camera, and setting the intervalometer — which is the thing that counts and does the time-lapse. Sometimes, I want to do a reveal shot — like to come out from behind a bush and suddenly show a big waterfall. That requires a time-lapse dolly, which is a six-foot-long rail with a little cart on top that’s all motor-controlled.

To get about 10 seconds of video, you need 240 individual photos. Most shots take about 20-30 minutes. But it depends on the motion you want. If you want to get shadows going across a mountain — that will take a couple hours. If you want the Milky Way to come from the left and go all the way to the right — you have to be out there for eight hours.

This piece has a lot of rhythm. How did you pace the different time-lapses?

I think music is the most important part of actually making a video. I’ll spend weeks and weeks finding the right music. The music that I initially chose, when I did an edit with it and sent it to my friends, they said it was too slow. They said, “Rio’s a lively city.” So I found something a little bit faster-paced. It’s still got a darkness — Rio has some pretty dark secrets. But overall, it’s just more upbeat and lively.

I’ve learned that you need to choose music that works best with the visuals, rather than something that you personally like. For this one, I just heard it, and I was like, “That’s it. That’s the song. That’s perfect for this video.”

Why are people so drawn to time-lapse photography?

I think it appeals because it’s something that you can’t see or experience with your own eye. Even if you stand in the same spot for three hours, you don’t notice the changes that happened in that time. It has to be shot, and you have to see it in video format to actually enjoy it.

It’s crazy. If you just set up a shot in your backyard, you’d be amazed at some of the things that happen — the sun, as it’s going across the sky, will at some point shine perfectly on a birdhouse. Time-lapse shows the things you don’t see and experience on a day-to-day basis — how things move and flow. Through time-lapse, you can see the earth’s motion. I don’t think it will really ever get old.

Mundano, a graffiti artist as well as a member of the newly-minted class of TEDGlobal 2014 Fellows, took the election as a call to artistic action. Best known for his project Pimp My Carroça, which called attention to the vital role of waste pickers in Brazil and around the world by customizing their carts, he had an idea. He arrived early in Rio from Sao Paulo, and spent the days before the election building an art installation to call attention to the amount waste involved in the elections.

We asked Mundano to tell us more about this newest work.

Tell us about this action – what did you do and why?

Brazilian elections generate a massive amount of waste. It’s all about money: campaigns give money to produce all these ads, and pay for citizens to promote them regardless of their political beliefs. So the streets of Brazil become choked with banners, posters, flyers, stickers, racks — none of which are recyclable. They will all go to a landfill. So I came a few days ago, and in Rio’s busy center of Largo da Carioca, I built a trash bin in the shape of the electronic voting booth. I then filled the bin with the ads themselves.

How did the public respond?

It’s funny — the first comment we got from the security guard was, “This is too small — it should be giant for all the trash they are producing.” A lot of people took photos, and these were posted a lot on social media. Some people who work for particular candidates took their candidates’ materials back out of the bin, to prevent people taking photos of their candidate in the trash.

Some waste pickers rummaged through to try to find something of value — but only found politicians. In the past, I’ve written this message on the carts that I’ve helped customize: “If corrupted politicians were recyclable, I would be rich.” I thought this message was great, but I have had a wastepicker say to me: “No, Mundano you are wrong. I won’t be rich because, when there are so many of them, the price goes down. They are worth less than cardboard!”

Is this something you often do, in other elections and in other cities?

Yes. For the past four election cycles, since 2008, I’ve been using election waste as material for art. I used to take the posters home, change their messages, and put them back out on the streets. I’ve also built big installations. But this is the first time I’ve made something that is actually usable. I typically take action in Sao Paulo because that’s where I vote, but when I realized I’d be in Rio for the elections this year – which are historical because there were more candidates with real chances, and no one knew what would happen – I thought it was the perfect moment. But for every election, I use these ads to make something to get people to reflect on the corrupted political system. On all the false promises, and all the awful waste.

Describe these posters – from what you say, they sound pervasive.

The typical posters really show only a face and a number. There’s no information on who these people are, or their main objectives. So it’s hard for people to decide from this who are the best candidates. Right now, if you go to Largo da Carioca, you’ll see them everywhere. There is a law that you can only put up these ads from 6am to 10pm. But I saw many yesterday at midnight. If this were policed and the candidates fined, it could raise money to encourage a reuse project. If the materials were even recyclable, garbage pickers would get rich selling them. But after the election, millions of ads will litter the streets — paper, folders, flyers, but also synthetic banners and trestles that can’t be recycled. And they will all go to the landfill.

How would you like to see this change?

Brazil is well known for its creativity, so if parties are going to invest all this money in ads, they should have the forethought to plan to make them useful afterwards — recyclable materials, or something of practical use — something intelligent.

Candidates’ representatives remove posters from Mudano’s Election Rubbish bin. A translation of text: “There’s not enough space here for all the election waste. Build your own Election Waste bin with only two trestles.” Photo: Mundano

This post originally ran on the TED Fellows Blog. More on the Fellows at TEDGlobal 2014:

Throughout the city of Rio de Janeiro, venues that value education will be able to watch the TEDGlobal 2014 conference through a free livestream. Photo: Thinkstock

“TEDGlobal Para Todos” means “TEDGlobal For Everyone.” And when the TEDGlobal 2014 conference kicks off at the Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Monday, October 6, people all over the city will be able to catch the amazing lineup of speakers in livestreams all across town.

More than 40 venues in Rio will stream the conference for free to the public through TEDGlobal Para Todos. All talks will be translated into Portuguese in real-time, so that they are accessible to a wide swath of the city’s population. This program to bring the conference out into its host city was born from the success of a similar experiment during this year’s TED conference in Vancouver, Canada. In Rio, sustainability consultant Gwendoline de Ganay has been helping to coordinate the effort by reaching out to local public schools, universities, cultural centers, libraries, non-profits and NGOs.

One of the venues that will be broadcasting TEDGlobal is Arena Jovelina Perola Negra, a community theater in Pavuna, in the North Zone neighborhood, an area made up of Rio’s favelas. “Rio has a lot of social divides,” explains Taciana Abreu, director of planning at creative agency WMCann, who’s in charge of organizing this livestream gathering. “Most of the city’s wealth is in the South Zone. It’s also where the main cultural events are, along with the city center and a small part of the West Zone. I wanted at least one transmission line [from TEDGlobal] to the North Zone of the city. And Arena Jovelina Perola Negra is a great cultural catalyst in the region.”

Across town, Ursulla Araujo is preparing livestream events in five creative co-working spaces: Casa 24, CasaCéu & Casa Sou.l, Catete92, Goma and Templo. “We are connected by a sense of community. Each location has a character and an identity,” she explains. Araujo is excited for many of the same talks. But one that has her especially excited: hearing from Tashka Yawanawá, chief of the Yawanawá people of the Amazon.

In addition to Araujo and Abreu’s events, viewers can also catch the livestream at MAC Nitéroi, the Museum of Contemporary Art of the municipality of Nitéroi. Events will also take place at Junior Achievement, an NGO that promotes entrepreneurial and leadership values to kids; the Bibliotéca Parque Estadual, a public library in the business center (“centro”) of Rio de Janeiro; and the Center for Digital Inclusion, a social enterprise dedicated to bridges the digital divide.

And the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, agrees. (Watch his TED Talk, “The four commandments of cities.”) He says, “Rio is proud to be hosting TEDGlobal this year, and we are very pleased that the organizers are allowing interested Cariocas to watch the free simulcast. Rio is a very dynamic city, a hub of innovation and experimentation, and that aligns well with TED’s focus on impactful ideas.”

Back in the ’90s, the golden mussel (Limnoperna fortunei) hitched a ride on ships traveling from Asia to South America. In the past decade and a half, the mussel has proliferated through South America’s river systems, destroying the native habitat and disrupting the operation of power plants and water treatment facilities. This invasive species now threatens the delicate ecosystem of the Amazon.

Computational biologist and TEDGlobal 2014 Fellow Marcela Uliano da Silva is working to put a halt to this. A native of Brazil, she’s sequencing the golden mussel’s genome for the first time; she tells the TED Blog how she hopes to use information gleaned from its molecular profile to stop current invasions and forecast future ones.

Tell us about the golden mussel — why does it pose a problem to South America?

The golden mussel originates from Asia, and arrived in South America in the early 1990s, carried in ballast water of ships. The first golden mussels were deposited in La Plata estuary in Argentina, and began to spread via the Parana River, going up all the way to the Pantanal wetlands. In these basins, golden mussels reproduced at high rates, fouling and clogging up the pipelines in power plants and water treatment facilities, as well as taking habitat away from native species. The mussels have made their way to Itaipu — one of the biggest power plants in the world — and they also do damage to many power plants in São Paulo and Minas Gerais in Brazil.

But the golden mussel doesn’t only spread via ballast water and larvae that swim upstream — the public play an active role in the invasion, too. There are several famous fishery festivals in the Brazilian wetlands, and people come by car, towing private boats from the south. When they put the boats in the water, they introduce golden mussels to new rivers. That was how it was introduced in the wetlands. That’s why awareness-raising and education are important: we need to avoid introducing mussels in new locations.

How do the mussels affect the native ecosystem?

Scientists are now calling the golden mussel an “ecosystem engineer,” because unfortunately, it changes environments very efficiently. One of its characteristics is that it reproduces a lot, creating huge populations. It’s a filter feeder, so when there are many mussels in one area, water transparency increases. Sunlight penetrates the water more deeply, changing phytoplankton levels and the balance of species living at the surface of the water. In some rivers, there is evidence showing that the fish population has increased 20% because they have a new food resource in the mussels. But when you increase the number of fish, it has a domino effect, as they are at the top of the food chain. Ultimately, when the mussel invades, it transforms the ecosystem, decreasing biodiversity and homogenizing the environment.

Map of the mussel migration. The golden mussel originated from Asia, and was introduced into the river basin systems of South America in the 1990s via ballast water. Today it has proliferated throughout the region’s wetlands and is threatening to reach the Amazon. Image: Julia Back

Are golden mussels a threat to the Amazon?

Yes, definitely, and that is one of our main concerns and reasons for developing a genetics-based solution. The Amazon is the most biodiverse environment in the world. So if the golden mussel gets there, it would modify the environment as it has done in the other basins in South America, unbalancing the ecosystem of Amazon. This would be a disaster.

What’s kept the mussel from reaching the Amazon up to this point?

Beyond the educational campaigns to prevent the spread of hitchhiking mussels, there is a Brazilian regulation in place called NORMAM 20, which makes commercial ships coming to the Amazon deballast twice before entering the Amazon river basin.

The waters of the Amazon basin also vary in their physicochemical characteristics, and to some extent this has helped prevent the golden mussel from establishing itself there. However, the so-called “white” waters — which have nearly neutral pH and a high content of suspended mineral solids — would be friendly to the golden mussel. The waters of the Paraná and the Paraguay and Uruguay basins, where the golden mussels have already spread, have similar characteristics.

Tell us about the paper you recently published. Why is it important?

So my work is to identify the golden mussel’s genetic data, and use our understanding of the mussel’s molecular profile in order to keep it from harming the environment.

We now have around 90,000 expressed sequences for the golden mussel, which allowed us to raise some hypotheses about the relationship between phenotypic plasticity and the success of the mussel as an invasive species and efficient ecosystem engineer.

For example, the genome of the oyster Crassostrea gigas, a bivalve like the golden mussel, offered us some insights about what to look for in the golden mussel transcriptome. This oyster has an expansion in some gene families that are expressed to keep the cell alive in moments of stress, like the Heat Shock Protein 70 (HSP70). It has 88 copies of this gene, while humans have only 17. This represents different adaptations of different animal groups, which have different life habits. Our first analyses showed that L. fortunei expresses at least 55 different types of HSP70 isoforms. We’re double-checking its profile now that we are sequencing the genome. But one of our main hypotheses is that the golden mussel likely has a robust genotype, differently expressed in diverse environments, that would give it an advantage in dealing with the challenges of establishing itself in a variety of environments, such as the different basins where it thrives in South America.

So how can you apply the mussel’s molecular profile to actively prevent a future invasion?

Our next step is to sequence the entire genome and understand the golden mussel’s gene expression, so that we can see the ways it copes with various stressors. For example, we plan to expose mussels to a range of temperatures to see which genes express. Studying these profiles, we can find key genes, which may be the future targets for a gene therapy approach.

Through a series of processes, we can develop RNA interference that will keep these genes from expressing — rendering the mussels sterile, for example. Another reason to develop this project is our interest in evolutionary studies. The more genomes we sequence, the better we will be able to understand relationships among the living species. This project is also part of an international collaboration called GIGA, which aims to keep track of groups working in genomics and transcriptomics of invertebrate species around the world.

What if you end up killing off the golden mussel all over the world, even in places where it’s not invasive?

This is a good question. Risk assessment studies have to be done before applying such approach in the wild, no doubt. Each invaded location is different, and we have to do a proper prior study. Nevertheless, new locations and controlled locations, like power plants, could deeply benefit from a gene therapy approach. The idea is to send a vector, like a virus, in controlled concentrations, so it would get to distant water bodies. This vector would contain a specific target for a specific golden mussel gene. This is much more efficient and harmless when compared with chemicals, which kill not only mussels but all the biodiversity around them. Gene therapy using a vector to carry the RNA interference is not like creating a transgenic mussel. We won’t introduce any new genes into the golden mussel genome, so the environmental risk is small.

Is the mussel a threat anywhere else?

Yes. Apart from the impacts to the most biodiverse ecosystem in the world, if the golden mussel crosses the Americas and gets to the United States, ecologists predict it would have a greater impact than the zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha), a well-known invasive species in the U.S. and Europe that’s responsible for millions of dollars’ worth of damage.

What else do you need to move forward with this work?

We are moving forward amazingly well, considering the number of people involved in this project. But we still lack ideal computational power. My co-advisor, Dr. Francisco Prosdocimi, has a computer cluster that we use to assemble the genome, but this is a very busy computer, as there are a lot of projects running on it. Our current solution is to do what many other scientists are doing: use the cloud to compute our work. But that also costs money and time. But it seems to me that the future of computer-processing is crowdsourcing.

How would that work?

Nowadays we all have powerful computers in our pockets — our smartphones. At the moment, while people are sleeping and phones are recharging, all that processing power is wasted. Why not use this computing power to help scientific research? There are already some scientific groups that have developed apps to harness this memory. One approach created by a group of researchers in Canada is a computational game. While the remote users are playing the game, they are helping to align gene sequences. So it’s kind of like Tetris.

As a native Brazilian welcoming TED’s first major conference to Brazil, what would you like the TED community to know about your country?

When I think about Brazil, I have mixed feelings. The first feeling is of great love: Brazilians are so tolerant and friendly with people from all over the world, and that makes me feel very proud of our people. I’m also happy that Brazil’s major problem — huge social inequality — has decreased vastly these last 10 years or so. The hurtful part, nonetheless, is that there are still a lot of people without opportunities and living in precarious conditions, which I feel is unacceptable for a rich country like Brazil. And it’s really time for us to find a way to grow our economy in balance and accordance with preserving ecosystems. This is an urgent matter that has been neglected, in my opinion.

All that said, I can really say that TED attendees should look forward to the experience. Brazil, with all its richness and diversity, won’t disappoint you!

]]>http://blog.ted.com/a-ted-fellow-wields-genes-to-protect-the-amazon/feed/52013-04-17_16-58-23_371-2mmechinitaMap of the mussel migration. The golden mussel originated from Asia, and was introduced into the river basin systems of South America in the 1990s via ballast water. Today it has proliferated throughout the region's wetlands and is threatening to reach the Amazon. Image: Julia BackClose-up of the invasive golden mussel, which proliferates quickly and densely, clogging up power plants, waterworks and destroying ecosystems. Photo: Marcela Uliano da SilvaUliano-Silva collects mussels at Jacuí River, in the city of Porto Alegre, southern Brazil. Photo: Rogério da SilvaFurther reading and watching on Brazil, to get you in the spirit for TEDGlobalhttp://blog.ted.com/further-reading-and-watching-on-brazil/
http://blog.ted.com/further-reading-and-watching-on-brazil/#commentsWed, 24 Sep 2014 20:00:37 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=91970[…]]]>

A view of Rio de Janeiro, where TEDGlobal 2014 will take place. Photo: Thinkstock

TED has traveled to Tanzania, to Canada and to India. We’ve been to Germany, to Qatar and to assorted places throughout the United Kingdom and the state of California in the United States. But in a few weeks, we are headed for the first time to South America. TEDGlobal 2014 kicks off on Monday, October 6, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

So why Brazil? And why now? Curator Bruno Giussani explains.

“We wanted to go to South America because it’s one of the regions of the world where we’ve never had an official TED event, but where TEDx and the Open Translation Project and TED.com are really taking off in a significant way,” he says. “We went and visited several cities—not only in Brazil, but in other countries too. We looked at many different options—big cities, small cities, capital cities, far-off cities. In the end, Rio turned out to be not only a very attractive city, but also a vibrant hub of creativity and innovation. It’s a place where there is big thinking on the social and political issues affecting the world.”

Below, some further reading — and watching — to get you excited for this trip to Brazil. Not able to be there in person? Get TED Live to watch from afar, or follow our coverage here on the TED Blog.

And naturally, we’ve got lots for you to read on what to expect from TEDGlobal 2014 in general…

]]>http://blog.ted.com/further-reading-and-watching-on-brazil/feed/5Uh6H_3hCRQSPbdXdRQ280axyqUI4scEfc-bF3h_znmQ,_dYEElsCOH619x9yYt6krnvoY-8Ia01DDw5rmR_Q5x0,HPzGJyrA9slYQAZzCFm5y_Yd31MdZ5bgENugdMHf15gkatetedThe favelas of Rio. Photo: iStockphotoAnother view of Rio. Photo: ThinkstockBound for Brazil: How we chose themes and speakers for TEDGlobal 2014http://blog.ted.com/bound-for-brazil-how-we-chose-themes-and-speakers-for-tedglobal-2014/
http://blog.ted.com/bound-for-brazil-how-we-chose-themes-and-speakers-for-tedglobal-2014/#commentsThu, 19 Jun 2014 17:02:00 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=90638[…]]]>TEDGlobal 2014 will be held in Rio de Janeiro from October 5 through 10. With a speaker program that ranges from a nomadic filmmaker to a Buddhist monk, from a technologist changing the way we detect cancer to a chef who’s preserving the culinary heritage of Brazil, the conference promises to flip our thinking many times over. We spoke to curator Bruno Giussani about the themes emerging in the program, the speakers he can’t wait to see take the stage. Below, an edited transcript of our conversation.

How did the theme “South!” emerge?

Every TED conference has a different theme, and we choose the theme based on our reading of current big trends. Of course, we choose them in a way that’s at the same time specific enough to provide an organizing principle for the program, but is also open enough to include very different and eclectic kind of topics. It is an interesting balance to seek: You want to be able to, throughout the week, deploy a lot of different topics and approaches, but at the same time, give coherence to the program and create a meta-narrative on top of the individual talks and sessions.

We are going to South America for the first time. The global South is clearly not only an emerging part of the world—it’s already having significant impact on pretty much every field, from politics and the economy to architecture and creativity. So we decided to call it “South!”. With an exclamation mark, to underscores that the global South is not just emerging—it’s a reality. It’s not somewhere in the future, it’s now.

What made Rio the right location for TEDGlobal 2014?

We wanted to go to South America because it’s one of the regions of the world where we’ve never had an official TED event, but where TEDx and the Open Translation Project and TED.com are really taking off in a significant way. There’s an engaged local and national TED community in every major country in South America. So it felt like—of course we want to go to South America.

We went and visited several cities—not only in Brazil, but in other countries too. We looked at many different options—big cities, small cities, capital cities, far-off cities. We got a lot of help from a lot of people—particularly the local TEDx teams, which I want to thank. They played a very important role in helping us understand the reality on the ground, and in connecting us with relevant people and organizations.

In the end, Rio turned out to be not only a very attractive city, but also a vibrant hub of creativity and innovation. Plus, it has a mayor who is a big fan of TED and who spoke at TED three years ago. (Watch Eduardo Paes’ talk, “The four commandments of cities.”) So we decided that Rio would be the place for TEDGlobal 2014.

TEDGlobal 2014 will be held at the Copacabana Palace Hotel, located on gorgeous Copacabana Beach. Photo: iStock

For a curator it is always difficult to single out one speaker over another. I’m excited by all of them—they represent such a broad spectrum of ideas, backgrounds and geographies. If you really want, I will give you three names that represent three different directions in which the program will be going. But I could have mentioned any of the 40 speakers.

José Padilha is a Brazilian filmmaker. His most recent movie, actually, was a big Hollywood franchise—he directed the new RoboCop. But that won’t be the content of his talk. Previously, he directed possibly the most significant movie about violence in Brazil: Elite Squad—or Tropa de Elite. Itcame out a few years ago, and it was about a squad of Brazilian police officers confronted with gangs in the favelas. It really hit a nerve in the political debate in Brazil. Besides, José is just a fantastic storyteller.

Then there’s Khalida Brohi, from Pakistan. She’s a young activist, and she has an incredible story. She was confronted in her close circle of family and friends with the practice of honor killings in the tribal regions of the country and she wanted to do something about it, so she started talking about it with the media. She was shunned by people in her village, as was her family. She realized that, in her activism, she was calling a practice wrong without looking at the values underlying it—which were actually very meaningful to people. So she went back to the village, sat down with the elders, and apologized. She asked them: what can we do together? What they came up with was the idea of creating an embroidery school for young women. We hear that and say, “That’s it?,” but it was actually quite groundbreaking. This is a region where young women are not allowed to gather alone or even leave the house without being accompanied, and she got permission from the elderly of her village for gathering them daily at a school. There’s so much more to Khalida’s story that I don’t want to give away, but what’s happened since has been incredible. Let’s just say she has found a very creative, innovative way for women’s empowerment. It’s a story of how slow-motion activism can achieve real results.

I think people will also be fascinated by Kimberley Motley, an American lawyer who is the only foreign litigator in Afghanistan. Basically, she defends foreigners who are in prison in Afghanistan for drugs, smuggling, whatever reason—and she also defends Afghan women in Afghani courts, with an astonishing rate of success. These are two groups that didn’t really get legal representation before she came into the picture. Hers is an interesting story about working within a legal system where you have to create legal protections through court cases. She’s basically building up a legal framework, case by case. She’s an incredibly courageous woman.

TEDGlobal is a global conference, but I assume you’ve paid special attention to South America?

Absolutely. We will have speakers from all across the globe, mostly from the global South. But because we are in South America for the first time, a number of the talks will be from Brazilian and South American speakers. So many different topics: we have education innovators, a chief from an Amazonian tribe, artists from the favelas, scientists, technologists, activists, historians. We’ve tried to invite a diversity of voices from all across the continent.

One name?

If you insist, I will mention Tasso Azevedo. He is a forest conservationist, and the man who can most be credited, together with his colleagues, with developing and pushing policies that have drastically reduced deforestation of the Amazon by 80%. Deforestation still happens, but it’s down from the peak. He’s very well-known in Brazil, and little-known outside of Brazil. But he’s done an astonishing service for all of us.

And a few names on the speaker list are very familiar. Tell us about some of those people.

The best-known speaker is probably Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who did the most to let the world know about the surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden. He just published a book, No Place to Hide. We’re still discussing his talk, but it will be about surveillance and privacy.

Miguel Nicolelis, well, if you haven’t heard of him before, you have certainly heard of him now. He’s the neuroscientist who led the team that created the brain-controlled exoskeleton that allowed a paraplegic young man to kick off the World Cup.

And then there is Vik Muniz, the Brazilian artist, who gave another TED Talk several years ago.

There are also superstars in their own field, like Wendy Freedman, the astronomer. She’s going to talk about building the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile. Have you noticed how most of the big astronomy telescopes are being built in the South? The South is the future of astronomy.

And we will also have a few other people whose names will be immediately recognizable.

Bruno Giussani shares some highlights of the TEDGlobal 2014 speaker program, and themes emerging as the event comes together. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

What are some unexpected themes and connections that you see emerging as the program comes together?

There’s a lot around the idea of South/South. From the North, we tend to look at things as a game of North/South or South/North. The North sends technology, ideas and aid money to the South, and the South sends back agricultural or industrial products (or squanders the money because of corrupt governance systems). That’s an obsolete way of looking at the world. The North/South thing is of course still there, very much so, but there’s also an incredibly powerful South/South dynamic. South/South trade is exploding, and South/South investment, learning, and idea-sharing are growing very fast. Ideas that are generated in Africa are developed in Brazil; technologies that are developed in China are used in Africa. A lot of the most interesting thinking around the impact of social networks in our life, for example, is being done in the South by young people with sociology, science, philosophy, economic and political backgrounds who observe things through a completely different lens than the lens we use in the North. They’re coming up with very interesting ways of looking at things.

When do rehearsals start for TEDGlobal talks?

We’re already working with some speakers—many of them have already sent in drafts of their talks. We’ll work with everyone over the next four months. Then we’ll bring them to Rio two days before the event for a final rehearsal on the stage. The final rehearsal is only partially for the speaker—they’re already ready at that point, so it is more for the people working around them, the cameramen, the light and audio technicians, and so on.

Speaking of the stage, tell us a little about what to expect from the theater.

The conference is taking place at the Copacabana Palace Hotel, which is one of the oldest and most interesting hotels on Copacabana Beach. The core of the conference will be at the hotel. But the hotel has only so much capacity, and so to complement the capacity, we are building an annex on the beach just in front of the hotel which will host the main speaker program. It will be a closed theater, of course. But from the annex, you’ll be able to walk straight to the beach. We’re scheduling the program and designing the spaces to give people time to socialize and to enjoy the beauty of Rio as well as attend the whole program. I mean, we will be on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world—in the middle of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It will be a great event.

First of all, congratulations on being named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer! What does this mean for you and your work?

Thank you! It’s an immense honor to be recognized by my heroes, many of them responsible for me becoming a biologist. I was that kid — reading National Geographic, absolutely in love with every single animal I saw, and awed by every single picture. With this support and recognition, we’ll be able to reach 90 million people through National Geographic’s powerful platforms. This will help us make a huge impact in our battle against wildlife trafficking – especially the wild pet trade in Brazil. I could not be more excited and hopeful!

Tell us how you became interested in wildlife, and in birds, in particular.

During my master’s research at the University of São Paulo, when I was working with the population genetics of sub-Antarctic fur seals, I learned that there was a such a thing called wildlife forensics—the use of science in the legal prosecution of crimes involving wildlife. I was hooked instantly, and I convinced the US Fish and Wildlife Service National Forensics Laboratory to accept me as a volunteer for three months—a relationship that continued until 2013. Around the same time, I was introduced to Marcelo Rocha, president of the organization SOS Fauna, which combats wildlife trafficking in Brazil. With him, I learned about the illegal wild pet trade in Brazil—particularly the illegal domestic wild bird trade. So my PhD research—developed in collaboration with both these organizations—focused on developing population genetic studies for Brazilian wild bird species exploited by the illegal trade. The idea is that, if we can detect distinct genetic populations within each species, we’ll not only better understand the threat each species is facing, but we can produce data that might help guide future efforts to release rehabilitated animals seized from traffickers.

What is conservation genetics, and how is it related to wildlife forensics?

First, I should say that while I’m often billed as a forensic biologist, I am not one. I’m a conservation geneticist: I use concepts and techniques from genetics to develop studies aimed at understanding the current extinction rate of species—with the ultimate goal of conserving species as dynamic entities capable of adapting to environmental changes through evolutionary responses. Forensic biologists produce data that are used in court, in legal cases. At the moment, my work can’t technically be considered forensic because the genetic data I’ve produced has not been used in court. It may be included in future legal processes—but in order for this to happen, we still need to develop comprehensive databases of genetic profiles from exploited species populations. It will require extensive fieldwork to collect samples of blood, tissue, fur, feathers, and so on from many individuals from different populations.

Tell us more about the illegal wildlife trade in Brazil. What sorts of animals are typically removed from their ecosystems?

All kinds of animals get taken, but the most highly targeted group is birds—particularly song birds, parrots and macaws, which are extremely popular as pets. Small monkeys, sloths, reptiles and amphibians are popular, too. The Brazilian NGO RENCTAS—the National Network to Fight the Trafficking of Wild Animals—estimates that more than 38 million animals are taken from the country annually by all kinds of wildlife trafficking including zoos and collectors, biopiracy and the pet trade. And that doesn’t count fish or invertebrates.

So this trade is primarily to a global market?

Actually, it’s important to note that, while global illegal wildlife trade is massive in monetary terms—about $20 billion a year—illegal trade between Brazilian states is several times bigger than what gets traded internationally from Brazil in terms of numbers of animals traded. And almost 83% of the seized wild animals in the illegal domestic trade are birds. But yes, a great many animals do get traded out of the country. Bear in mind that not all of it is illegal. Most species can be traded as long as permits are in order, and according to their CITES status. But it is very difficult to have reliable estimates of what gets traded illegally.

What are some of the social and environmental effects of the Brazilian illegal wildlife trade?

Taking animals out of their natural habitat raises four major concerns. First, it’s an activity that rewards criminal organizations while exploiting poor people from vulnerable communities, who collect the animals for traffickers. Secondly, animals are captured through violent methods and are transported in inhumane conditions—leading to broken beaks, feathers or legs. And every wild animal is a potential source of disease like rabies and tuberculosis that can infect humans.

Finally, exploiting even a single species can lead to the unbalancing of a whole ecosystem beyond its resilience limit, with serious consequences. Each living thing in the wild plays a specific role in the web of ecosystem interactions. When many animals are taken from nature regularly, they stop doing their jobs, whether they are predators, prey, pollinators, seed dispersers or seed predators. If too many of one species of bird are removed from a particular location, for example, local insect populations could explode, possibly even becoming pests for humans. And it’s not just animals that are affected: if a tree species depends on this bird to disperse its seeds, it will have reduced dispersal capacity. Therefore, all the species in the area that depend on this tree will end up suffering. In extreme cases, fewer trees and reduced ecosystem regeneration could even mean the region might experience soil erosion. The effects can be very far-reaching.

Taking too many of one species can also cause negative selection. For example, birds collected for their special qualities—beautiful feathers, singing ability—will no longer be there to pass on their unique gene combinations, which created this beautiful animal. Also, when fewer individuals are left to reproduce, the remaining population can become more genetically similar—the offspring will be related. Again, in extreme cases, this has the potential to make the remaining population more susceptible to disease, environmental changes and reproductive difficulties. There’s a term for this: “inbreeding depression.”

Legbanding a red cowled cardinal. This identifies animals already worked with so that they are not sampled twice, and so that their progress can be checked. Photo: Erica Pacifico

Can birds recovered from illegal trade be re-released into the wild?

Yes. Many times seized animals can be re-released into the wild, provided certain criteria are observed. The most important thing is that they need to be healthy and strong to face all the environmental challenges they’ll encounter in the wild. It’s also important that they’re healthy so that they won’t introduce diseases into the environment. They should also be able to recognize natural food sources and predators, display healthy reproductive behavior, and so on. They need to be strong enough to move around—birds need strong flight muscles, which often become atrophied when in captivity.

There are other environmental concerns. We have to be careful to release rehabilitated animals in an environment capable of supporting the new population with enough food sources and places to rest and nest, so as to not overcrowd the habitat of the natural populations. And animals should also always be released as close as possible to their collection site. Animals can become adapted to characteristics of the places they live—such as rain regimes, temperature, seasonal food sources and so on. If they’re released in places with different characteristics, they may not be able to adapt quickly enough to survive. Finally, releasing animals into genetic populations different from the one from which they were captured can cause more harm than good, causing a phenomenon called “outbreeding depression.”

What does that mean?

Sometimes differentiated populations within a species are adapted to specific local geographic conditions, or may have developed blocks of genes that function well together but not so well with different blocks of genes. So, depending on the degree of differentiation, if animals from different populations were to mix and reproduce, their offspring might present a decrease in their ability to cope with environmental challenges. That’s why we have to figure out the most probable origin of seized and rehabilitated animals to be released.

Ferreira doing field work in Bahia. Here, she writes down data and prepares to catch, weigh, measure, legband and rehydrate a bird. Photo: Fabio Schunck

In the TED talk you gave at the Fellows retreat, you raised the possibility of an alternative pet trade economy involving captive-bred birds. From the outside, that seems a sustainable solution. What are your views?

Yes, in theory, captive breeding of wild species could potentially supply the consumer market for wild pets. But there are two points worth mentioning. First, domestication should not be confused with taming, which is to increase a wild animal´s tolerance to humans. Captive-bred animals are still wild species. The biggest difference between wild and domestic species is that the latter—like dogs, cats, goats, pigs—have been artificially selected by humans for thousands of years, and have different genetic and phenotypic traits from their wild ancestors. They are also dependent on humans. In contrast, captive-bred animals continue to present strong instincts like mating, dispersing, defending territories, searching for natural food sources, and so forth. So keeping such animals in cages or restricted spaces—often alone and with inadequate food sources—for the sake of human vanity or entertainment is, in my opinion, a violation of the animal’s well-being.

From a species and environmental conservation point of view, legal commercial captive breeding requires intense enforcement and control or it can backfire, as has been happening in Brazil. Dishonest “breeders” find that it’s much cheaper and easier to collect wild animals from nature illegally, and pass them off as captive bred in the market. Criminals can even profit from this, as legally captive-bred animals are sold for much higher prices. It’s very difficult to detect and prove the existence of such schemes, and even when criminals are caught, penalties are exceedingly light. Personally, I’m against keeping wild animals as pets. We should instead be spending our resources and energy in conserving a healthy environment where species can continue to evolve in response to environmental changes. But if it’s going to happen, I think that at least paternity exclusion tests should be compulsory, and paid for by breeders.

An illegally traded bird, seized by authorities and sent to a federal triage and rehabilitation facility. Photo: Juliana Machado Ferreira

As concerned consumers, what should we do if we see birds or other animals that we think might be being illegally traded?

Illegal animals make it to all continents, so first, be informed about which species can be legally bought in our home countries and where those animals come from. Ask for documentation, and do everything in reach to ensure the legal origin of that animal. If you have reason to believe that an animal may have been poached, contact law enforcement and your nation’s environmental department. If you think they may be corrupt, this may not be enough. In that case, contact the media and nonprofit organizations that deal with wildlife trafficking, or at least with environmental conservation. And ideally, if you want a pet, adopt a stray dog or cat instead—and travel to see wild species in their natural environment.

Your work encompasses so many different approaches to conservation. I’m curious: what’s a typical day like for you?

I don’t have such a thing as a typical day! I might be in the field with my colleagues catching birds with mist nets to sample drops of blood for my genetics studies. I might be in the lab with my advisor and my student doing hand-on science and population genetics. I might be out in the field with SOS Fauna on raids or doing investigation work—or giving lectures to students, or organizing a workshop with the prosecutor’s office or the federal police. Lately, my typical day has been working as much as possible from my home office while looking after my 5-month old baby.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/juliana-machado-ferreira-battles-brazils-illegal-wildlife-trade/feed/8Juliana main imagemmechinitaFerreira takes a blood sample from an ultramarine grossbeak in Bahia, Brazil. Photo: Erica PacificoFerreira participates in a raid in São Paulo, seizing illegally traded and/or owned animals with the São Paulo State Police and SOS Fauna. Photo: SOS FaunaLegbanding a red cowled cardinal. This identifies animals already worked with so that they are not sampled twice, and so that their progress can be checked. Photo: Erica Pacifico Ferreira doing field work in Bahia: writing down data and preparing to catch, take a blood sample from, weigh, measure, legband, rehydrate a bird. Photo: Fabio Schunck An illegally traded bird, seized by authorities and sent to a federal triage and rehabilitation facility. Photo: Juliana Machado Ferreira How the World Cup can make or break Brazil’s hopes for the future: Misha Glenny gives a talk on the country that’ll host TEDGlobal 2014http://blog.ted.com/how-the-world-cup-can-make-or-break-brazils-hopes-for-the-future-misha-glenny/
http://blog.ted.com/how-the-world-cup-can-make-or-break-brazils-hopes-for-the-future-misha-glenny/#commentsTue, 20 May 2014 20:41:18 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=90193[…]]]>

If you ever find yourself in Brazil, advises Misha Glenny, try to look past the samba, soccer and sea. The journalist, who is currently researching a book on the underground drug trade in Rio de Janeiro, sees a Brazil of challenges, contradictions and opportunities that are far more complex than the celebrations on Ipanema let on.

During an in-office TED session, Glenny took a look at Brazil’s long, winding history and showed how the nation’s pervasive economic inequality traces back to Portuguese colonialism. We can still see the effects today, he asserts in the talk above, a TED Blog exclusive.

2014 is arguably the biggest year in Brazil’s history, as economic hopes, social gains and national pride converge in this year’s World Cup. It’s the first time since 1950 that Brazil has hosted the tournament. Since the country has seen huge strides in economic growth and social programs in the new millennium, hopes are high. But the picture is not all rosy — inequality is still incipient, and concerns about violence and protests leave many worried about the fate of the games.

The TED Blog caught up with Glenny to learn more about the palpable energy building up to this World Cup, especially in Rio de Janeiro, which will host TEDGlobal 2014 months after, in October. The political, social and economic context of this tournament is unprecedented — and Glenny says the events of this summer could make or break Brazil’s hopes for the future.

Below, an edited transcript of this fascinating conversation.

Let’s talk about the current atmosphere in Brazil. Why is this World Cup such a pivotal moment?

There’s a sense of real uncertainty. There’s a sense of a turning point — but without any real confidence as to whether it’s turning backwards, forwards, left, right, up or down. How did we get to that stage? I think you had two very important things—the presidencies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula da Silva. Fernando Henrique did a great deal in terms of bringing down inflation and laying the foundations for the social policies which Lula then implemented. The paradox of the two presidencies is that, in visibility and charisma, Lula outshines Fernando. But despite being seemingly on either side of an ideological divide in Brazil, they actually complemented each other really well.

Those leaders were in charge from 1995 through 2011. What’s the legacy three years later?

A lot of this was based on the commodity boom, which came to a halt fairly rapidly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. So rather than seeing fundamental structural changes in the Brazilian economy and society, you saw the whole ship rising with commodity prices. People were getting better rations, basically. But since the recession hit Brazil, one is beginning to see just how superficial and insubstantial the investments were. So there was a lot of money pushed into the consumer economy, and importantly into the most poverty-stricken standard of living, to shove them just over the bread line. But these hid real problems, which are now coming to the fore.

Where do the World Cup and Olympic bids fit into this picture?

The decision to apply for the World Cup and the Olympics took place when Brazil was in full flight as the sort of new master BRIC. Despite having a considerably smaller economy than India or China, Brazil was punching at an equally powerful weight. They had seen what happened in China in the Olympics, and thought, ‘We can do the same.’ And when I say ‘they,’ I mean the government and the elite. There’s an easily definable elite in Brazil—it’s small, powerful, and inordinately wealthy—and they basically said, ‘We’ll have the World Cup, we’re Brazilians, we’re great at football, it’ll be a fantastic festival. We’ll have the Olympics, and everyone will think that we’re the most diverse country in the world.’

And then two things happened: the recession, and the Brazilian tradition of corruption in major state-sponsored infrastructural projects. Immediately contracts emerged for the construction of the stadia, which were uncompetitive and sent huge sums of state money into private hands. And the current president, Dilma Rousseff, failed to see beyond the big statist or semi-statist companies like Petrobras, the oil company, or Vale, the mineral extraction company, or any of the construction companies, which are huge entities inside Brazil and have a profound history of corrupt practices that they have engaged in with the government. All these things came together as the world economy was collapsing. And what that meant is that Brazil was exposed as being incompetent in terms of delivering on the major infrastructural projects.

The World Cup will have a big impact on Brazil. Journalist Misha Glenny thinks it could do great things for the country, or bring to a head big problems. Photo: Flickr/Joyce Kelly Campos

What other factors are contributing to this situation?

Two other things. Brazil’s first generation of a middle class that is fully educated up to university level has tremendous expectations economically and is looking for jobs appropriate to their education. But those jobs don’t exist. And so you get a middle class that wants a proper health system, proper transport and jobs that reflect the investment that they’ve made into their education. There has been little preparation for this on the part of the elite.

What we saw last summer with the protests across the nation was a specific assault on the establishment. The demonstrators numbered a million-plus in over 100 cities in Brazil and, for the first time, included the PT, the worker’s party, the party in power. These demonstrations were entirely spontaneous. Nobody was expecting them, working on the assumption of a tradition of popular passivity in Brazil. And they coincided with the Confederations Cup. All of a sudden, the demonstrators realized they could really disrupt things — they could embarrass all of the elite and basically hold the Confederations Cup to ransom.

And when Dilma took part in the opening game, she was booed. Not just by people surrounding the stadium outside, but people inside the stadium. The assumption is that Brazilians love football, more than anything else. What the demonstrations showed is that they care about their education, their transport,and their health even more than they care about football. They realized that, during the World Cup, their impact could be massive.

Do you think protests will surface again next month when the games start?

It will depend on how Brazil does in the World Cup. I mean, it’s a fascinating intersection of politics and popular culture. If Brazil were to go out in the first round—which is unlikely but not out of the question—this would be a real problem for the government. Which is why as soon as anything happens like Neymar’s toe getting injured, this is not just a run-of-the-mill football injury—this is a matter of state. I mean that. It is discussed at the highest levels. Fortunately, it’s not a broken metatarsal, which would’ve ruled him out. It’s just a basic stubbed toe.

The other factor is urban violence. The big focus of this—although in statistical terms, by no means the most violent—is Rio. The difference between Rio and the rest of the cities is that the favelas are inside the city center.

All of the favelas in the center have been pacified under the UPP program, which is whereby you go in with urban shock-and-awe first, and you neutralize either through arrest or through killing or through expulsion, the leaders of the drug cartels. Then you put in supposedly touchy-feely police forces, who are meant to be like Swedish policemen and policewomen, but of course they’re not. The final phase is what’s called the Social UPP, which is backing up with health, sanitation, schools — the basic structural things which are pretty thin on the ground in the favelas. That Social UPP hasn’t really happened at all.

Now, you’re seeing the police getting slightly out of control. One or two very important deaths have contributed to a collapsing of trust between favela residents and the police. We just saw in Pavão-Pavãozinho, a favela right next to Copacabana, a favela resident was shot by a police bullet. That collapse of trust allows the traffickers to come back into the favelas. This is what’s been happening over the past four to six months. The pacification program, whose primary motivation was to ensure that tourists were all going to have a great time during the World Cup, is coming apart at the seams.

What the government faces as we lead up to the World Cup is a problem on two fronts. One, is middle-class youth, full of idealism, radicalizing. They might take to the streets, surround the stadia, use the World Cup as a way of expressing their anger and disgust at corruption throughout the administration on a state, provincial and municipal level. And on the other hand, there’s the danger of trouble in the favelas spilling out into the tourist areas. Were the two to coincide, that would be a perfect storm of disaster for the Brazilian government.

We are at a very delicate, difficult moment politically, with a weak leadership that is eyeing the presidential and some state elections in October. The president’s popularity ratings have dropped over the past three months from about 48% down to about 36%. But the opposition remains firmly rooted in two other main candidates, and they have even lower approval ratings of 15% or 7%, meaning that they’re not able to take advantage of her rather stark decline. But everyone knows that nobody is able to predict what’s going to happen during the World Cup. All bets are off.

It seems like the UPP programs are being implemented to prepare the city for tourists, rather than focusing on improving the wellbeing of residents. What happens after the sporting events are over? Do you think these programs will actually benefit favela residents?

It’s worth pointing out that since the UPPs were implemented, there has been a significant drop in the rates of murder and urban violence in all of the favelas that have been pacified. In that sense, they improved the quality of people’s lives unequivocally. The drug cartels veered between being enlightened despots and North-Korean-style dictators, and maintained social control through fear.

But it is a slightly more complicated picture. The civil order of the favelas is less predictable than it was. There’s still petty crime. Crimes against women, in particular rape and domestic violence, have increased. In principle, pacification is a very interesting and potentially important policy innovation. But the backup on social programs is not receiving the resources and attention it requires and this will backfire on those who are supporting pacification in the midterm election.

There’s clearly a desire to clean up areas where businesspeople and visitors from outside come. It’s clear which ones are prioritized. There is a deep suspicion amongst some favela residents that this is all really just preparation for a gentrification of these areas in the center of town. When they were established during the colonial period and the first half of the ‘20s, people didn’t want to live on the hills, because they had to walk up them to get home. Middle-class and rich people liked to live near the beaches. Now, of course, living on a hill gives you a spectacular view— some of the favelas in the South Zone, which is where the tourists are, have the best views in Rio. And now you can just drive up the hills by car. So there is a fear that pacification is really just a prematch warm-up for the removal of the favelas and replacing them by up-market properties for which people will pay huge sums of money.

We don’t know if that’s the case. Vigidal, a favela in the South that overlooks Leblon and Ipanema beaches, is referred to as the “West Village of favelas,” because it’s attracting artists and IT people, and designers. But I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Vidigal, and it’s still a favela. The electric supply is still crap, the supplies are awful, as is the sanitation. [To gentrify it], you’d have to go in there and either give people money to get out or just bulldoze them out. I don’t think they’d do either.

Journalist Misha Glenny, a regular TED speaker, has spent the last year doing research in Brazil. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Who has legal claim to the land in the favelas? Are there property titles?

No. The UPP is meant to distribute titles and put up a property register. At the moment, possession is basically 9/10 of the law and it’s desperately, desperately confused. People need to understand what their relationship is to property and, at the moment, we don’t fully know. If pacification had the proper resources behind it—if you had a social UPP and you had clear urban planning that worked in cooperation with the residents—then pacification could be a spectacular thing. But it’s far too premature to suggest that that is the case.

Are you seeing favela communities working with the UPPs?

They do. You can’t underestimate the impact of the collapse in the level of urban violence — of murder and crossfire between the police and the traffickers. It’s a big difference in your life when you know that if you walk down the street, you’re not going to get a bullet through your leg or through your head.. These communities were prepared — all of them — to give the UPP police force the benefit of the doubt.

Some favelas, particularly the smaller ones that are dotted around the South Zone, are relatively content with the way things have worked out. But in the bigger ones—ones where there has clearly been an abuse of power by the police, like in Rocinha, the biggest one, or in Pavão-Pavãozinho, Complexo do Alemão or Complexo da Mare, which is very, very tense —you have seen a loss of trust, so that cooperation is less likely than it was, say, six months ago. Still, some favelas are, in principle, happy to work with the police.

Let’s talk more about the protests—those from last summer, and the potential for another wave this summer. People are realizing that they have a voice. What are they asking for? Do you think their requests will materialize?

There are a lot of specific, local demands. The protests started in São Paulo, with the demand to rescind a rise in transit fares. But in each city, specific grievances change. In Rio, people were protesting poor public health and the fact that traffic is so gridlocked that everyone takes three or four hours to get to work in the morning, particularly if you live in the outlying favelas. In cities which stadia were built, the focus was on the amount of public money poured into those projects, which are all privatized.

The three things highlighted in all the cities were: health, education and transport. The other big focus was corruption. Until last November, no politician had ever been sentenced and imprisoned for corruption. That changed when about 10 members of the PT were imprisoned for the Mensalão scandal, basically an election-financing rigging operation. What everyone who went out onto the street last time wanted was to see is that when you are investigated and accused of corruption, you go to trial, and that if you’re found guilty, you go to prison. Things have improved slightly in the past two years — but the whole thing is unacceptable. At the moment we still have a situation where you can be sentenced for corruption on a grand scale and, within a decade or so, you can be back in public office.

The problem is that the colonial legacy, which I talked about in the TED Talk above, is so powerful with respect to this—the culture of corruption on a parochial, quotidian level as well as grand corruption between the political and economic elites. These are practices that have established very deep roots in Brazil, down into Brazil’s soil. Ripping them up is going to take a long time. There are signs that some people are fed up—and that’s a very good thing.

Do you have any predictions on how all these dynamics will play out this summer?

Everything is going to revolve around the World Cup. I’d say it’s 50/50 as to whether people take to the streets in large numbers. That will be what defines the year for Brazil—it will have implications for the presidential elections in October. If things go wrong, they can go very wrong. If things go well, that may be sufficient for a significant shift in mood away from the negative, which dominates much of the country at the moment, Fingers crossed, I hope that will happen.

All this aside, Brazilians are really geared up for the World Cup. They are hoping and expecting that Brazil will win, and Brazil is still one of the four favorites for this championship. It will, without question, be a real boost to Dilma, but also to Brazil’s image, if the team does win.

Those who wish Brazil well in its present troubled circumstances should, I think, hope that Brazil wins the World Cup. Some people — some Brazilians I know — would argue that Brazil should go out in the first round so that there will be chaos, which will then be cleared up by people introducing a more rational system of government. That’s the speculation. But most people, I think, will want to see Brazil win the World Cup and restore its self-confidence, which five or six years ago was sky-high.

Misha Glenny: Hire the hackers!
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]]>http://blog.ted.com/how-the-world-cup-can-make-or-break-brazils-hopes-for-the-future-misha-glenny/feed/15World-Cup-featurelizjacobsThe World Cup will have a big impact on Brazil. Journalist Misha Glenny thinks it could do great things for the country, or lead to problems. Photo: Flickr/Joyce Kelly CamposJournalist Misha Glenny, a regular TED speaker, has spent the last year doing research in Brazil. Photo: James Duncan DavidsonA nomadic filmmaker, a datacaster and a pair of favela painters: A sneak peek of the speakers at TEDGlobal 2014http://blog.ted.com/a-nomadic-filmmaker-a-datacaster-and-a-pair-of-favela-painters-a-sneak-peek-of-the-speakers-at-tedglobal-2014/
http://blog.ted.com/a-nomadic-filmmaker-a-datacaster-and-a-pair-of-favela-painters-a-sneak-peek-of-the-speakers-at-tedglobal-2014/#commentsTue, 20 May 2014 14:03:15 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=90167[…]]]>TEDGlobal 2014 is venturing “South!” In October, we’ll gather in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for a five-day conference that will flip your thinking on innovation, problem-solving and, well, the world. Today, we’re revealing the first 40 speakers who’ll appear on the TEDGlobal stage. (Which, by the way, is being built on Copacabana Beach). They range from a “satellite datacaster“ to a “nomadic filmmaker,” each bringing with them fresh ideas that the world needs to hear.

]]>http://blog.ted.com/a-nomadic-filmmaker-a-datacaster-and-a-pair-of-favela-painters-a-sneak-peek-of-the-speakers-at-tedglobal-2014/feed/6Hass&Hahn-Image-(cleared)-featuredkatetedHass&Hahn-Image-(cleared)Jimmy-Nelson-Gauchos-(cleared)Wendy Freedman is building the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile. With greater resolution than any telescope ever built, it will answer many questions about our universe.Architect Alejandro Aravena creates a different kind of public housing, designed to build up the people living in it.Khali-Brohi (cleared)Sao Paulo in pictures: Juliana Machado Ferreira picks her favorite places in the cityhttp://ideas.ted.com/2013/09/26/sao-paulo-in-pictures-where-to-go-and-what-to-see-in-this-urban-jungle/
http://ideas.ted.com/2013/09/26/sao-paulo-in-pictures-where-to-go-and-what-to-see-in-this-urban-jungle/#commentsThu, 07 Nov 2013 20:01:03 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=83372[…]]]>Biologist and TED Fellow Juliana Machado Ferreira grew up just outside of São Paulo, and went to both university and graduate school in the megalopolis. [Read a profile of her life and work.] She prefers a more natural environment, but after a brief stint in the Amazon, she is back in the city, looking for an apartment. Despite the stress and the incessant traffic, the urban environment simply makes her job easier: she is closer to the University of São Paulo, where she did her graduate research and which she still uses as a home base, as well as to the conservation groups, police and government officials that help with her work to stem wildlife trafficking. She gets her nature where she can in local gardens, municipal parks and at the beach.

And then, of course, there are the city’s other bonuses: cinemas, coffee and restaurants. For instance, who could resist “Capricho” ice cream? Here, Ferreira describes some classic São Paulo spots, photographed exclusively for TED by photographer and videographer Alessandra Fratus, whose last exhibition, Acrexiste, showed in September 2013 at the University of São Paulo.

São Paulo State Legislature I regularly meet with politicians to convince them about wildlife protection. They will take the position to Congress and try to defend something that we think is important. It is really rewarding and important for our work. I will meet with them where they ask — often at the state legislature building. State Legislature, Avenida Pedro Álvares Cabral 201, Ibirapuera, São Paulo.See the State Legislature on a map.

Garden at the University of São Paulo Everyone in the lab brings their lunch, which we heat up in the microwave, and then sit outside to eat it. It’s so beautiful, not least because we see the birds. Sometimes other students will join us and it’s a joy for us. It’s really cool. Instituto de Biociências, Rua do Matão 14, Butantã, São Paulo. See the University on a map.

Espaço Itaú de Cinema This is my favorite movie theater. It’s not in a mall — it is directly on the street — and it plays a wide range of films, with a preference for what I think can be called “cult movies.” I also love it because it is right next to Frevinho, the restaurant with the best ice cream ever. (Try the “Capricho” flavor, which is unique to Frevinho and is cream ice cream with chocolate syrup and a sort of a flour made with peanuts, cashew nuts and other nuts and crunched cookies.) Espaço Itaú de Cinema, Rua Frei Caneca 569, Consolação, São Paulo.See the Cinema (and Frevinho) on a map.

Coffee Lab I catch up with my friends at this coffee shop in one of the coolest, bohemian, artistic neighborhoods in town. Vila Madalena is full of bars and restaurants and little shops, and it has a great nightlife. Mind you, with a baby on the way, I haven’t been able to enjoy that for a while now! Coffee Lab, Rua Fradique Coutinho 1340, Vila Madalena, São Paulo.See Coffee Lab on a map.

General Prime This is my favorite junk food place in town. I am addicted to their Prime Veggie sandwich (with brie cheese and Paris mushrooms) and their Nutella milkshake! General Prime Burger, Rua Joaquim Floriano 541, Itaim Bibi, São Paulo.See General Prime on a map.

CEMUCAM One of my favorite places is not actually in the city, but it is in the metropolitan region, the park where I take my dog and my dad for long walks on the weekends, called CEMUCAM. It’s a 500,000 square meter area, and the greater part is composed of regenerating Atlantic forest. It’s full of animals, birds, people exercising… It’s totally beautiful.

]]>http://ideas.ted.com/2013/09/26/sao-paulo-in-pictures-where-to-go-and-what-to-see-in-this-urban-jungle/feed/4CEMUCAM_02brookeborelSão Paulo State Legislature. I regularly meet with politicians to convince them about wildlife protection. They will take the position to Congress and try to defend something that we think is important. It is really rewarding and important for our work. I will meet with them where they ask--often at the state legislature building.Garden at the University of São Paulo. Everyone in the lab brings their lunch, which we heat up in the microwave and then sit outside at a table that my professor bought. It’s so beautiful outside, not least because we see the birds. Sometimes other students will join us and it’s a joy for us. It’s really cool. Cine Itau. This is my favorite movie theater. It's not in a mall, it is directly on the street and it plays a wide range of films, with a preference for what I think can be called "cult movies." I also love it because it is right next to Frevinho, the restaurant with the best ice cream ever (try the "Capricho" flavor, which is unique to Frevinho and is cream ice cream with chocolate syrup and a sort of a flour made with peanuts, cashew nuts and other nuts and crunched cookies.) Espaço Itaú de Cinema - Augusta (R. Augusta, 1475)Coffee Lab. I catch up with my friends at this coffee shop in one of the coolest, bohemian, artistic neighborhoods in town. Vila Madalena is full of bars and restaurants and little shops, and it has a great nightlife. Mind you, with a baby on the way, I haven't been able to enjoy that for a while now! Coffee Lab (http://raposeiras.com.br/) - Rua Fradique Coutinho, 1340, Vila Madalena, São Paulo.General Prime. This is my favorite junk food place in town. I am addicted to their Prime Veggie sandwich (with brie cheese and Paris mushrooms) and their Nutella milk shake! My City: The urban jungle of Sao Paulo, as seen by biologist Juliana Machado Ferreirahttp://ideas.ted.com/my-city-the-urban-jungle-of-sao-paulo/
http://ideas.ted.com/my-city-the-urban-jungle-of-sao-paulo/#commentsThu, 07 Nov 2013 20:00:25 +0000http://blog.ted.com/?p=83423[…]]]>

Juliana Ferreira is not a city person. Although she grew up just outside of São Paulo — the largest city in the largest country in South America, with a population of 11.32 million — she prefers beaches, or parks or even the country’s vast savannas and forests, where she once spent 20-day stretches collecting blood samples from red-cowled cardinals and green-winged saltators as part of her anti-wildlife trafficking research. But after living for three years in the Amazon with her husband, she is back in São Paulo, apartment hunting.

Living in São Paulo has its upsides. Ferreira, a 33-year-old biologist and wildlife advocate (and TED Fellow), has better access to the University of São Paulo, where she is working from the Laboratory of Evolutionary Biology and Vertebrate Conservation. She can also work more closely with SOS Fauna, a wildlife conservation NGO that helps combat Brazil’s $2-billion-a-year illegal animal trade, as well as Freeland Brasil, a new organization she founded to work on complementary issues. The city makes it easier to meet with the politicians and police officers vital to wildlife protection.

She’ll miss the Amazon, though. “Everything pulses with life. When it rains, it rains a lot, and the thunders are amazing, and when it’s sunny, it’s really sunny. Everything is superlative. It’s big and powerful,” she says. “I will miss feeling the true feeling of nature. It’s a very special place.”

São Paulo is a different kind of jungle. Two days a week — after breakfast over two regional newspapers, O Estado de São Paulo and Folha, which she reads for their different takes on local politics and social issues — Ferreira goes to a windowed office overlooking her parents’ backyard. She is staying in her childhood home in the upscale suburb of Granja Viana until she finds something more permanent in the city. As she works and looks at real estate listings, she can see toucans foraging for fruit in the trees outside. They aren’t supposed to be there. The birds, she thinks, were displaced when construction workers cleared a nearby swath of forest to make way for a new apartment complex.

The rest of the week, Ferreira drives to the university lab via the Raposo Tavares, the longest highway in São Paulo, stretching over 400 miles from the city center to the west. When she was young, this was a country road lined with trees and picnic areas; now it is nothing but a concrete chute lined with small brick houses built by squatters. Such neighborhoods have become so common that the local government has resigned itself to paving the roads and installing streetlights. From the homes, says Ferreira, you can hear the songs of caged birds. Most likely, they are wild species, some of the estimated 38 million animals poached in Brazil each year.

On a good day, it will take 25 minutes to drive just over ten miles. On a bad day, Ferreira is swept into the unpredictable rush hour traffic, which can start early in the morning and last until nearly noon. These commutes take at least an hour and a half, with cars, buses and trucks at a standstill while delivery boys on motorcycles — called motoboys — dart “in and out of traffic,” says Ferreira, “like crazy bees.”

“Urban mobility in São Paulo is chaotic,” she says. Still, it’s the best option. It’s too dangerous to navigate a bicycle on the crowded roads. The public buses are unreliable, don’t follow schedules and can be unsafe late at night. Thefts and violence are common, as Ferreira herself has experienced in both Sao Paulo and in the northern state of Bahia.

To drown out the motoboys and the honking and the stress, Ferreira turns on the radio. Though she won’t sing in front of people, claiming a terrible voice, in the car she belts out everything from bossa nova to Aretha Franklin to the Clash. If she wants something kitschy with a rhythm, she plays forró. If she’s really in a singing mood, she goes for American classic rock. “Queen is good for traffic,” she jokes.

Mornings at school are as hectic as the Raposo Tavares. “I’m not a very good multi-tasker. I always begin seven things at the same time and I never finish any, but I always advance on all of them,” she says. This includes combing through hundreds of emails, fielding calls from real estate agents, editing scientific papers, juggling fundraising responsibilities for Freeland Brasil, helping with a documentary on wildlife trafficking with SOS Fauna, and making Skype calls with federal police in the capital city Brasilia about trafficking cases.

Lunch is a welcome break in a courtyard surrounded by Brazilian cherry trees, black mulberries and cabelluda, a native fruit-bearing shrub. Over homemade lunches, Ferreira and her colleagues discuss everything from evolution to gossip and listen to the songs of rufous-bellied thrushes, squirrel cuckoos and ruddy ground doves.

Then, it’s back in the car, the traffic tempered by more singing. Or, Ferreira will use the vehicle as a moving office to make work calls or even check email if the gridlock is especially immovable. For a break, she will call her husband or listen to language courses on DVDs.

Depending on the day, Ferreira winds up at one of her favorite coffee shops for a business meeting, such as Ekoa, a central and convenient spot with free Wi-Fi. Or she might drop in to visit with friends at Coffee Lab in São Paulo’s artsy Vila Madalena neighborhood, or stop in for a treat at one of the city’s famous Brazilian bakeries, called padarias. Other times, she battles traffic to meet with politicians at the state legislative assembly, next to Ibirapuera Park on the south side of the city, to talk about their positions on the illegal wildlife trade and to make sure her views on the matter are heard. So far, she and others have persuaded Congress to review documents related to environmental policy and wild animal breeding programs. “This relationship with legislators is a work in progress,” she says.

As the afternoon slides into evening, Ferreira is back in the car. Some evenings, she goes back to the suburbs for a late evening swim at the local pool or a DeRose Method class, which is a little bit like yoga. Other nights, she may go out with her husband. This has reawakened a kind of love for city life, the part she missed while living in the Amazon. Out in São Paulo, Ferreira, a longtime vegetarian, may dine at Nectare, which she says is the “very best vegan restaurant ever,” or at General Prime, where she will have a veggie sandwich with mushrooms and Brie. Or, for a rare treat, she may catch a cult movie at Espaço Itaú de Cinema and have ice cream at the nearby restaurant, Frevinho.

While the city is big and polluted and sometimes feels lonely despite being home to more than 11 million, it is also a welcoming place for people from all over the world. Its vibrant communities include Italian, Jewish, Arabic and Japanese mixed in with Brazilian. “The food and the music gets so rich in the mixing of cultures that I think it is beautiful,” Ferreira says. “I think São Paulo has a place for everybody.”

In the past week, vast protests sparked by a bus-fare increase have rocked Brazil, taking its leaders – and the world – by surprise. TED Fellow and conservation biologist Juliana M Ferreira offers an insider’s perspective on what led to this transformational moment.

With all the eyes of the world on Brazil due to the upcoming World Cup 2014 and Olympics 2016, the view of the last few days, especially on June 17th, was a little different from the world’s stereotypes of Brazil: happy and beautiful people partying and dancing semi-naked samba, and enjoying soccer matches while sipping caipirinhas.

What the world saw was the explosion from pressure that had been accumulating for a long time. News agencies claim that altogether, 250,000 people were protesting that day in many Brazilian capitals. However, photos show that this number was actually much higher. It started when local governments raised bus fares by some cents (different values in each State). In Sao Paulo, the fare went from 3.00 to 3.20 Reais, the equivalent of 10 cents in the US. The first protests were organized by a movement called “Free Pass,” which advocates for free public transportation to guarantee citizens’ right to move freely. These first protests, however, gathered fewer people and were less organized, more violent and more linked to some political parties than the one that happened on June 17th. In these first protests, some protesters vandalized public and private properties. However, when police responded with apparently unscrupulous violence, all eyes in Brazil began to turn to this movement, and people from all walks of life started to join the movement to protest police violence, for the people’s right to protest and reduced fares or free public transportation.

However, this is the social networking era. And just as it happened in the Arab Spring, protesters in Brazil began to self-organize through social networks, calling more people, persuading friends to participate. The movement changed and became more spontaneous, less violent and definitely not headed or organized by political parties. With more people joining the protests, the list of claims grew and became less focused. People were not protesting anymore for the 10 cents raise on bus fares. All repressed disappointment exploded in the voices of Brazilians from very different backgrounds.

Young people don’t see any opportunities in their future and more experienced people are disenchanted with politics after a lifetime of fights against military dictatorship for democracy and direct elections. Older Brazilians have hoped for so many times and for many years that the political situation in Brazil would change, but instead, the politicians in power are the same, political parties seem to have lost connection with any ideologies and only function as sellers and buyers of political support for funding or positions in the government.

Brazilians are also watching powerlessly as inflation increases and the government manipulates numbers to deny this obvious fact. The state’s expenditure is as high as ever, and we have never had this many appointed positions (just the president’s cabinet has approximately 20,000) and ministries/cabinets (we have 39 now). There is widespread corruption in all levels of power, and public resources are used for personal or parties’ interests and in exchange for companies’ financial support during elections. Politicians in Brazil have very high salaries and unbelievable privileges such as cars, drivers, plane tickets, apartments, immense cabinet funding, right to employ several assessors and lifelong benefits, just to mention a few.

Brazil is organizing the most expensive World Cup of all time, building overpriced stadiums that will not have much use in the future, while public education, health and security are hanging by a thread. Our country also has one of the highest tax rates in the world. At the same time, there are virtually no public services. Some can pay for private services and those who can’t are left helpless. Programs that were created for wealth distribution became tools used to buy votes and mass manipulation. The government is clearly focused on infrastructure development, ignoring technical information related to environmental conservation or energy, for example, making decisions based on political interests that are completely ignorant about technicalities involved in these decisions.

Brazil is also known for the almost complete lack of independence between legislative, executive and judiciary powers, the most basic principle of democracy. The last maneuver of the government in this direction is the infamous PEC37, a proposal (overturned two days ago in response to the protests) to change Brazil’s constitution to restrict just to police forces the prerogative of investigating law infractions. This would restrict the ability of the “public ministry” (the Brazilian body of independent public prosecutors, working both at the federal and state level) to perform investigations. Such restriction only exists in a few totalitarian countries and would have meant a significant regression in our democracy. Lastly, the opposing party is mute and, in reality, practically inexistent, becoming accessary to this situation.

The cherry on the top of this cake was the trial of the “mensalao,” one of the biggest corruption schemes of all time, in which the government paid congressmen and senators in exchange for political support. Defendants that were convicted by the Supreme Federal Court not only are not facing their penalties, but some of them, after the conviction, were tenured as federal congressmen with all benefits.

So for many Brazilians, the protests are now much more than just about the public transportation problem. The biggest difference that I see in comparison to the Arab Spring is that our movement lacks one clear demand, such as that the president resigns, for example. Even if he did, this would not change a single thing, as the vice-president, the president of the congress and all in line of succession are as bad as or worse.

In a sense, these protests are more of a wake-up call for citizens to show all their discontent, and to show politicians that Brazilians are done being manipulated, lied to and robbed. However, the movement still needs to mature and become a force with political results. In my opinion, the only way for things to start changing substantially in Brazilian politics are long-overdue political and fiscal reforms. Otherwise, there is the possibility that we will just go back to the lethargy we were in up to now. I hope not, from the bottom of my heart and for the future of my beloved nation.

Next year, TEDGlobal will be held for the first time in Latin America — in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from October 6-10, 2014, on the beach of Copacabana. The theme for the event is, appropriately, “South!” and will be a celebration of the innovation, dynamism and creativity pouring out of South America, as well as out of the global south at large. Because fresh ideas can come from any direction.

“Rio has been beckoning TED for many years, both metaphorically and literally,” says curator Chris Anderson, explaining why we opted for this new location. “It’s at the heart of a continent bursting with fresh thinking. We’re delighted to finally be going. This conference will be ambitious, a thrilling new chapter for TED’s growing community of global souls.”

TEDGlobal Director Bruno Giussani adds, “We are proud of the conferences we’ve held in Edinburgh. As TED’s international reach has expanded, Latin America has emerged as a clear and exciting next move. Rio is not only a hub of innovation, but presents a rich history and exquisite physical setting.”

Registration for TEDGlobal 2014 will open in October. Stay tuned to the TED Blog for more information…